Digital Media and Content Distribution

Despite flat growth over the past year for virtual reality in both consumer familiarity and ownership , VR technologies remained focal points of many companies at CES® 2019, particularly because the technology has generated much higher interest in consumers outside the U.S.
According to Parks Associates’ 360 Deep Dive: Ownership, Use, and Perception of Virtual Reality , roughly one-fourth of U.S. broadband households are familiar with virtual reality headsets, games,...

OTT video service popularity is still on the rise over 10 years after its debut. Parks Associates shows that there are now over 200 service options to choose from in the U.S. alone. While there are clear leaders in the industry, like Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon’s Prime Video, the remaining competitors are still battling for a spot on the top 10 list.
Parks Associates recently released its 2018 update to the top 10 OTT contenders in its OTT Video Market Tracker and it seems that...

The growth in both traditional OTTs and virtual MVPDs has been the story of 2018 so far in the digital media marketplace. It seems every day a new service is launching, a new company is entering the space, and a new option for content emerges for consumers. Luckily for content companies, consumers appear receptive to this trend and have responded with subscriptions.
According to data from early 2018, Virtual MVPDs have seen the largest growth of any type of OTT service...

Parks Associates’ new Market Snapshot - OTT and Pay TV: Partnerships and Competition that covers the decline in pay-TV services during the first quarter of 2018. According to the research, 15% of broadband households have “cord-cut” and stopped subscribing to their pay-TV company in favor of OTT streaming services. As heads of households get younger and prefer cheaper, instant streaming alternatives, pay-TV is suffering.
Though still relatively new to the market,...

Stories about the pending purchase of 21 st Century Fox assets have dominated the media industry headlines over the past few weeks, with Comcast conceding to Disney’s $71 billion cash and stock offer for said assets.
However, The United States’ Department of Justice recently ruled that they will approve a sale of these assets to Disney only if they agree to divest Fox’s 22 regional sports networks (RSNs) as part of the deal, due to monopoly concerns stemming from the...

Esports is going to be aired on ESPN during prime time. Activision Blizzard, the publisher of Overwatch , has announced a deal with Disney that will see the Overwatch League playoffs be broadcast on ESPN, ESPN 3, Disney XD, and ABC. While other esports such as Heroes of the Storm have been broadcast on Disney XD and ESPN before, this agreement will see the first day of the Overwatch League finals broadcast at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN with later highlights and analysis of the finals airing on...

Amazon created the new template for services seeking to create a one-stop shop for streaming media content with their Amazon Channels offering in late 2015. What started with a simple platform for content aggregation has turned into a new strategy for players in the OTT space to create a more desirable—and affordable—content offering for their consumer with the ease of convergent billing.
Several platforms/services have followed Amazon’s lead in aggregating content...

By Brett Sappington and Billy Nayden
What a great coincidence that AT&T’s acquisition of the company that brought us the power struggles of Westeros and Game of Thrones is likely to set off a new era of competition in pay TV.
With a federal judge approving AT&T’s $85 billion buyout of Time Warner late Tuesday afternoon, the courts cleared a path for a number of imminent media deals that will undoubtedly bring substantial change to the media landscape....